Age of Innovation

2016-08-17 Source：theworldofchinese

A lot of what are typically considered traditional Chinese characteristics and practices (foot binding, tea drinking, etc.) found their origins in the Song Dynasty, which spanned roughly from 1,000 – 1,300 CE. There was an astounding amount of innovation, particularly technological, taking place during this time. The Song Dynasty gave the world a wide array on inventions, from gunpowder to porcelain.

Marco Polo is believed to have visited China in the late 1200s—there is debate as to if this actually occurred, but this article will work on the principle that it did—and is said to have realized that China was the most advanced country in the world.

Innovation during this time spanned fields as diverse as agriculture (rice cultivation and irrigation systems), printing (mass production), and the fine arts (creation of porcelain). And, despite much debate, some even say that the idea of spaghetti came from the Song Dynasty, carried across the ocean by Arab traders.

The agricultural advances during the Song Dynasty revolutionized China, as new strains of rice, improvement of water control and irrigation, and the remodeling of landscape into terraces led to substantially higher rice yields. The Yangzi River regions were primarily where rice was grown, so it is relatively unsurprising that these regions become the economic capital of China during this period. Before these series of innovations, a majority of Chinese people ate primarily wheat and millet. Coinciding with the rising popularity of rice in China was the rising popularity of tea, replacing wine as the most common drink.

Much in the same way the development of the Gutenburg Printing Press dramatically lowered the cost of books and encouraged the spread of literacy, in the 9th century China created its own mass printing technique that achieved the same results. Notably, in China, the advent of a mass printing device led to the rapid spread of medical knowledge. The technique involved carving characters into wood, inking them, and then pressing paper onto the blocks, allowing each page to be full of text and illustrations. Due to the character-based nature of the Chinese language, this was the most cost effective way to print, though by the 11th century movable type had also been invented. While movable type was never as widely used in China as block printing, it was this innovation that eventually revolutionized printing in Europe.

The development of a method that allowed the production of porcelain became what was essentially China’s first commercialized industry. By the 17th century, the two main products the West wanted from China were tea and porcelain. Ironically, there are some accounts that the Chinese themselves did not like the famous blue and white porcelain that was so popular in Europe. Despite the development of this extremely fragile product, the Song Dynasty also established the use of gunpowder for both weapons and fireworks. Toward the end of the Song Dynasty, the Chinese even invented multi-stage rockets, which eventually led to the technology needed to put a man on the moon, and the notion of an explosion in a self-containing cylinder, which is the basis of modern modes of transportation.

In the 11th century, Su Song created a mechanical clock tower nearly 40 feet tall in height that told not only the time of day but the day of the month, phase of the moon, and the position of certain stars and planets in the sky. Seng Gua, also from 11th century, provided even more discoveries of this nature. In his famous book 梦溪笔谈 (mèng xī bǐ tán, Dream Pool Essays) Seng Gua theorizes on the deflection of a compass from due south, existence and reasoning for petrified bamboo, the correlation of tides to moon cycles, and why the sun and moon must be spherical.

In the preceding Tang Dynasty, astronomer Yi Xing led the national project to observe, identify, and locate stars. However, by the Song Dynasty, Chinese astronomers had constructed extensive star maps and an array of instruments for measuring the precise movements and locations of these stars. One significant invention that came from this mapping of the stars was the development of an accurate calendar. While the first Chinese calendars were published in the second and third centuries BCE, it was due to the astronomical innovations beginning in the Tang Dynasty and expanding in the Song that allowed for exponentially improved accuracy.

Beyond technological innovations, many more customs and characteristics that are now thought of as distinctly Chinese come from the Song Dynasty. For no one single root cause, the population in China doubled during the Song Dynasty, from approximately 50 million at the end of the eighth century to about 100 million in the 11th century, making China the largest country in the world at the time. The practice of binding women’s’ feet also originated during the Song Dynasty in the tenth century, and the practice became widespread within a few hundred years. There was even a revival of Confucianism during this time, as it served as government orthodoxy for a substantial duration of the dynasty.

Even among the extensive duration of Chinese history, the Song Dynasty is known for its economic and social innovations, many of which still influence the present. The large amount of influential innovations that came out of this period were unprecedented both for their relative degree of complexity and comparison to other world powers. Impressively, modern technology still has its base in a large amount of Song Dynasty inventions.